TableTop

If you listened to the last AggroChat podcast you’ll have heard this bit already. I’m going on vacation tomorrow driving up to visit my friends Belghast and Rae. It’s not a very long drive, but I don’t get to take these kinds of trips often. I’ll have my phone hooked up to my aux jack in my car listening to “Death Masks” by Jim Butcher as read by James Marsters. This series of books has quickly become one of my favorites, and nothing beats having Spike read to you. If you’ve never read the Dresden Files of books I would highly recommend it, and if you have that much more disposable income I’d get the audio book. While I won’t get in to the details of where I’m going, or where I’m driving from I’ll say that I’m very much looking forward to this trip. Partially because I’ve been really … Read more…

Just going to add that 2013 at the top because I hope this does become an annual event. I will say I was very much looking forward to TableTopDay since it was announced. I managed to get most of my friends enough notice so that we could plan to get together that day, even if only for a few hours. Since this was on Easter weekend everyone had other things going on during the day, and could not stay late because of early morning obligations but we had a solid 5 hours of table top gaming. Previous to TableTop being aired (or really before youtube for that matter) I had purchased a few games but never really had a chance to play them. I already owned Killer Bunnies, Munchkin, Chez Goth, and Ninja Burger. Up till (and including now) those games have been played at most one time. It was … Read more…

So yesterday Felicia Day posted a video to youtube on the Geek & Sundry channel explaining what she thinks being a geek really means. It’s a good video and I recommend watching it before reading the rest of this post. Watching this has gotten me to think about being a geek. I would say that I am a bigger geek now than I was as a teenager, mainly because I have money to enjoy the things I want to enjoy. Back then I probably would have gotten defensive about being called a geek or a nerd, because even though I always say I tried to not care what people thought about me, it really did affect a lot of the decisions I made for a long time. What I took from that video is that simply enjoying something that might not be considered “cool” like collecting comics, or enjoying science … Read more…

Before I jump in to the events that led up to the final events of this story I should explain a couple things. The first is that we really should have seen these events coming. We had all heard about the strange stories on the news, higher numbers of physical attacks, hospital overcrowding, and communications breaking down. I’m sure people suspected the truth, but nobody took it very seriously. Everyone wanted to believe that these were just coincidences and that there was some logical explanation. As time moved on though you could see people starting to get nervous, visiting the ammunition store, canned goods selling out, the mad dash to buy Twinkies. A few people left town to visit relatives, or boarded them selves up in cabins on the outskirts of town. The second was noticing the increased number of what appeared to be animal attacks. There was a large influx of people … Read more…

After graduation I had a couple months before starting up medical school. Most of that time was spent working so that I could save up for my expenses. Unfortunately the cost of medical school was quite a bit more than I was making working at my regular job so I was forced to take up student loans. I figured that in the end as long as I wound up with a decent residency that I could pay them off within a couple years. Once medical school started up I noticed that there were only a couple of faces that I recognized. While only a handful of people had made it through the program, few of them decided to either continue on or to do their medical school at SJU. I probably could have gotten in to something a bit more prestigious but I didn’t want to have to go through … Read more…

If Junior year was my second favorite year, Senior year would be my favorite. All of the hard classes were out of the way so all I had to do was take the MCAT exams and the rest would be smooth sailing. Thankfully due to great planning on my part I had a relaxed schedule. I only had to be in class a couple hours a day, but had Fridays off giving me three days every week to get all of my coursework and studying taken care of. I continued to work the hotel job I had picked up the previous year since it was working out pretty well. While all of my classes were going well, I was increasingly ready to get out of that school. Since I lived off campus I had to drive in to school every day and parking on campus was abysmal. When I had first started there parking was … Read more…

Junior year was probably my second favorite year at SJU. This was the year that I moved off campus and started to find myself. Living off campus allowed me a bit more freedom in the hours I kept, which was good because that year I had started working part time off campus to make money. I found early in the fall semester that I didn’t have the time, or the desire, to continue tutoring but I still needed a way to earn tuition and still live off campus. Unlike the two previous years where I had classes scheduled throughout the day, that year I decided to have all of my classes in the morning each day which would allow me to work a few hours each evening and still keep up with all of my coursework. I managed to find a job as a hotel concierge in the evenings, which allowed me to study … Read more…

My sophomore year at SJU went by pretty quick. Sophomore year was more about Organic Chemistry rather than the general chemistry I had during my Freshman year. I continued to earn money on the side with tutoring, not as much as the previous year, but enough to get by. I find that there isn’t much to talk about when discussing your college years. Everything, for the most part, is fairly routine. You meet some interesting people, and you have fun when you can, but when you have lofty goals you have to put a lot of that aside. However, there were a couple of interesting things that happened during that semester. At least interesting enough that they still stick out after all these years. During the fall semester of my Sophomore year I was living on the third floor of the dorms. The rooms were fairly sparse, two desks, two beds, two closets and a sink. The beds, for whatever reason, … Read more…

Life after high school was pretty great. I was no longer the shy, reclusive kid I was when I first left home, but a outgoing, popular young man. People didn’t really know about my love of General Hospital, but nobody was surprised by my decision to become a doctor after all, my favorite subject was anatomy. Though that was as much a literal thing as it was figurative Since I knew for a couple years that I wanted to go in to medical school I had read every book the school could offer on the subject, as well as biology and chemistry. People often wonder why I decided to go to Stupid Jerkface University to get my medical degree when I had several better offers. The reason I told everyone was because it was close to home, and I didn’t want to be to far away from my family. The real reason was because … Read more…